Jean-Marie Straub and Claire Simon for Andolfi

07/08/2014 - Arnaud Dommerc’s company to manage Kommunisten and organise the documentary Place aux jeunes that will explore the Fémis (the National French Film School)

Kommunisten by Jean-Marie Straub

Noticed with Under the Starry Sky[+see also: trailerfestival scopefilm profile] from Dyana Gaye, unveiled last year in Toronto, the Parisian production company Andolfi led by Arnaud Dommerc has just completed Jean-Marie Straub’s feature film Kommunisten with six days of shooting in July in Lyon. The movie is made up of five parts: Days of Wrath (shot in Rolle in Switzerland this summer – taken from André Malraux’s novel by the same name), Hope (taken from Workers, Peasants - 2001), Les Apuanes(the Apuane Alps) (taken from Fortini Dogs - 1976), The Communist Utopia (taken from Der Tod des Empedokles - 1987) and New World (taken from Schwarze Sünde - 1989). Kommunisten has received an advance on takings from CNC and will be distributed in France by JHR Films. The director (81 years old), who has been going it alone since his partner Danièle Huillet passed away in 2006, was selected three times in competition in Berlin (in 1968, 1984 and 1987) and once in Venice in 2006 with These Encounters of Theirs[+see also: film reviewfilm profile]. In the same year, the Venice Film Fesival had awarded him a lifetime achievement award - a Special Lion for Innovation in the Language of Cinema. It’s worth noting that Kommunisten and two of the director’s shorts (A propos de Venise ‘About Venice’ and Dialogue d'ombres) are scheduled for the 67th Locarno Film Festival (from 6 to 16 August 2014).

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In September, Andolfi will continue filming the documentary Place aux jeunes from Claire Simon which will be sold internationally by Wide House. Selected three times at Cannes (in the French Cinema section in 1997 with A Foreign Body and at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2006 and 2008 with On Fire[+see also: film reviewtrailerfilm profile] and God’s Offices[+see also: trailerfilm profile]) and in competition at Locarno in 2013 with Gare du Nord[+see also: film reviewtrailerfestival scopefilm profile], this time the director will delve into the daily life of the Parisian cinema school la Fémis. Her goal is to portray it as a prestigious college, a school of Art, a place of learning, where a specific ideal of Republian excellence is practiced and entry into which can be summed up as follows: "everyone’s equal, but only the best get in…". The film will seek to illustrate the ideas shared and transmitted between two generations in one of France’s most prestigious film schools.

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